Ten Easy Holiday Gifts

1. One of these irresistible DIY fruit slice umbrellas.  

2.  An ASOS star crown headband for all of the goddesses in your life.

3.  Felt mistletoe for your main squeeze - it's the gift that keeps on giving.

4.  Another stocking stuffer for the Twin Peaks fanatic in your life (or Gilmore Girls or Sherlock).   

5.  A Ghost Rose Candle - Catbird's ghost rose solid perfume, with notes of English rose, champagne and peony, has garnered a cult following.  I love the perfume's mysterious, romantic scent, but have found that it fades quickly.  Candles are something that I'm always reluctant to splurge on myself, but as a gift, the fragrance is a lovely addition to all of those winter hours indoors.  Bonus: it's named after a passage in Anne of Green Gables.

6.  A Havana Lomo'Instant set for the winsome photographer in your life (and everyone has a winsome photographer in their life).  Doesn't it make you want to vacation in Miami Beach in the sixties?

There's also a Lomography shop in the West Village for many more options.  

7.  A classic home planetarium (or perhaps tickets to the planetarium at the Natural History Museum) for the starry-eyed nerd in your life.

8.  Beautiful old books with that intoxicating old book smell: Sometimes a charming edition of a favorite book is a comforting thing to have.  Go old school and write a note inside of the front cover.

Alibris is my go-to source for older editions of books.  Of course, there's always trusty eBay and bookshops like HousingWorks, The Strand and Unnameable Books.   For new copies of old favorites, special editions are available from the likes of Penguin.  If money is no object, Juniper Books offers beautifully designed or custom collections.     

Dre-e-eam, Dream, Dream, Dream

9.  A gift subscription to MoviePass:  Going to the movies is hella expensive these days.  I used MoviePass for some time before hitting a busy period.  For a monthly fee that equals two or three movie tickets in Manhattan, you can see up to one movie per day (with the caveats that you can only see each movie once and they cannot be 3D movies).  Tickets are obtained through a user-friendly app, which covers most theaters, including indie ones.  A three month gift pass seems perfect for a movie lover in the throes of Oscar season.

Still from the impossibly beautiful movie Blancanieves.

10.  And finally, an easy gift for the whiskey enthusiasts in your life: pourable Manhattans, a barrel-aged, ready-to-drink cocktail, made from a pre-prohibition recipe.  

For the more adventurous, there's also chocolate whiskey (made in Brooklyn from the cocao husks used to create Mast Brothers chocolate).